At Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, Wooden, a guard, gained All-America honours as a basketball player for three seasons (1930–32) and won a Western Conference (Big Ten) medal for athletic and scholastic excellence. He coached high school basketball in Kentucky and Indiana before entering the U.S. Navy in 1943. After World War II, in which he served as a physical education instructor, he was head basketball coach and athletic director at Indiana State Teachers’ College (now Indiana State University) in Terre Haute from 1946 to 1948. He was appointed head coach at UCLA in 1948 and retired in 1975, with a record of 620 wins and 147 losses, for an .808 percentage. His 40-year record was 885 wins and 203 losses, a percentage of .813. Among Wooden’s most notable accomplishments at UCLA are two record-winning streaks: 88 consecutive games (over the course of four seasons) and 38 consecutive NCAA tournament games. He was named the NCAA’s College Basketball Coach of the Year on six occasions (1964, 1967, 1969–70, 1972–73). Wooden was the first person to be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. The John R. Wooden Award annually honours the nation’s outstanding player as chosen by a media poll.

Wooden, with Steve Jamison, wrote two books on lessons from his experience as a coach: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On on and Off off the Court (1997) and Wooden on Leadership (2005).